- A lot of creators on this platform, they rise, they fall.
A lot go to great stardom and then crash and burn.
I talked to several creators, four of them,
who have been on YouTube for over 10 years,
and I asked them to share what their advice is
for how we can achieve longevity on this platform,
continually stay relevant, and also just those pitfalls
that we need to avoid in growing our audiences
and our channels if we really wanna do this longterm.
All their creative advice is coming up right after this.
(exciting rhythmic music)
You have the benefit most creators don't have of looking--
- Great looks!
Charm, a sense of humor, no ego.
(men laughing)
- Looking back on 10 years of YouTube,
and you've seen a lot of creators come and go, rise and die.
What were some of the mistakes you've seen
that a lot of those people made, like,
that just did not make their channels sustainable longterm?
- Well, I mean, I've done that.
My channel certainly isn't sustainable longterm.
I haven't made money on YouTube since 2014, or so.
I mean, I still make videos but it's not my main
source of revenue.
My channel died, like, I had no interest in growing,
I had no interest in hiring outside help,
I was very set in my ways,
I was doing What The Buck Show with a green screen
and I thought my videos were funny,
and my views were dying, dying, dying, I didn't care.
Quite frankly, I didn't wanna do anything else.
I was still enjoying my videos, I thought I was funny,
and I had made so much money 2008 to '12 or so,
it didn't really matter, I was like, I don't care.
So, I mean, I lived off that money for a while
while I continued to just make videos and
watch my channel die.
So, yeah, so it's funny that you say who.
I'm a great example of a channel that grows and died.
- Well, one mistake that I made is I created
a variety comedy channel.
(man laughing)
When you create a variety channel, you get fans who like
one thing and other fans that like,
one fan might like this one series,
another fan might like these pranks,
another fan might like the man on the street.
And so, everything you upload is gonna please some people
and other people are gonna hate it.
And so what happens over time with a variety channel,
if you don't focus on one kind of narrow thing,
you just tend to lose subscribers.
Because they're like, these are not cosplay comedy
interviews, and these are not the pranks.
And people just abandon the channel.
- I just think what YouTube is looking for,
in terms of what it wants to promote, has shifted.
It's very much, very heavily focused on watch time now,
session time, do you get people to watch your entire videos,
longer videos help in that regard,
and do they stay on the site for a long period of time
after they watch your videos.
Session starts are a big part of the algorithm.
When you upload a video, does it cause a lot of
new sessions to start that didn't stay on the site
for an extended period of time.
All of these are things the algorithm looks at and,
ultimately, chooses to reward what you do.
- Understanding that YouTube.com is a website,
I mean, it could be gone tomorrow and
they don't owe us anything.
They don't owe us anything, they can change the site
anytime, they can change the algorithm, they can change...
I mean, for me, when they changed the most subscribed list
and the most viewed, and all of that,
it was very kind of difficult and a lot of my views
went away in that moment because a lot of my views
were based on that.
I'm not gonna sit here and complain,
I'm not gonna say, again, my successes on Youtube, all me.
My failures on YouTube, all me.
And that's, again, that's part of emotional adulthood
is taking responsibility for everything.
You can't make me happy, you can't make me secure,
YouTube can't make you happy, YouTube can't make you secure.
It's all you.
- Yeah.
- So, my advice, if you're in it for the long haul,
have the time of your life, be patient,
and don't be afraid to take chances.
And it's a great website but at the end of the day,
it's just a website.
- YouTube has shifted, I think, partly because
the world has shifted.
Most views are now on mobile, they're on mobile devices.
YouTube had to create an algorithm that got very, very
good at guessing at what the next video was
that someone wanted to watch.
- They're very good at it, it got me every time.
- They do, because when you're not on a desktop,
you don't have as much visual real estate to say,
okay, there's this option, this option, this option.
YouTube pretty much has less real estate so
they invest in a lot of resources, a lot of redesign,
to get that guess right, in terms of what
the next thing is you wanna see.
- I think my biggest mistakes were definitely not adapting
to the site changes, staying the course with the format
that was not working, and a style of video making
that simply wasn't popular anymore.
Two, just putting all my eggs in the YouTube basket,
which is a huge one, which that was a big mistake.
- You're talking financially?
- Financially, emotionally.
And I would go to the events, I would go to VidCon,
and I didn't make videos, I didn't collaborate,
I didn't network, I mean, I sat at the hotel bar
and I drank, or I complained about the state of YouTube.
I was not taking action to stop the decline of my channel.
And so, that's the other thing.
When you go to the events, you have to network.
- Relationships and connections definitely matter,
and when you become an isolated person,
like in your own little box on YouTube,
things can start to decline and you have no one
to reach out to now for help, or ideas to help spur
you on or change formats, or whatever you wanna do to like,
like, those relationships are very important.
- And a lot of the biggest things I say helps is
thinking of a new name, the name of your own brand
of the content that you do.
One thing I did is I invented the name Tay Zonday.
I literally put it in quote and Googled it,
I got zero results, and then I took it everywhere.
Took it to YouTube.com/TayZonday, Google,
in Gmail, you know, it's my domain, .com, .net,
Facebook, everywhere I can take that url,
I still take it to this day.
And a lot of channels I see, you know,
they're competing with other channels, other things
for their Google results, you wanna be the number one
result on Google.
- I mean, my main advice in any career is always put
yourself first, your priority first.
I mean, I think a lot of these people, who, especially,
who are like daily bloggers, they put the fans first--
- Oh, yeah.
- And then they're so burnt out,
and they're so over the site.
And so, my main advice is keep it all in perspective
and have some sort of balance of family life
and social life.
I mean, YouTube was my whole world, it was my social life.
If I looked at my phone in 2008 or '09,
all my friends were YouTubers.
There's something about it that's so encompassing
and intense.
- Well, people lose themselves.
You know, this world of YouTube, it is a lot of fun,
you can get a lot of success.
But with success comes also a lot of stress.
And a lot of internal struggle of, oh my gosh,
I need to continue to make people happy because
this is working.
But really, you need to stop and find yourself,
and make yourself happy.
And I think a lot of people lose that drive to make
themselves happy when they're too busy
making the world happy.
- The content that you make has to actually mean
something to you, and you must really love doing what you do
because if you don't, then you're just kind of in it
for the money, and that's not really gonna end well
for most people.
It's so much work, you really have to love what you do
or your life is just gonna be miserable.
But at some point, you know, YouTube is sort of an
all day, all night project.
You could literally spend all your waking hours pursuing,
like, making new videos and promoting them,
and doing everything YouTube related,
but you do have to have a personal life.
And you have to find your own personal happiness
in your life, and I tend to go really far in that direction,
and pretty far away from the work direction
most of the time.
- Yeah, I do, too.
- I tend to err on the opposite side.
- The ones who really make it longterm on a platform
are the ones who have been able to pace themselves,
and say no to things, and put family first
and personal things first, and not sacrificing everything
in their life for the sake of their channel.
- I told somebody, it was somebody earlier today
while we were here, I said that I don't make any videos
that I personally don't believe in because
that would mean that I don't believe in myself.
So, make things that you enjoy,
make things that make you feel good.
And if you start to feel a bit of a burnout,
you know, something's not working, then change it up.
Go and try something new, even if your audience is like
I love this, and maybe you're getting millions of views.
Start another channel, maybe on the side,
and call it a pet project.
But as long as you're making videos that make you happy,
you're gonna have a long career.
Don't focus on your numbers, don't try to compare
yourself to others, YouTube is not a pie to be had,
a piece of pie that everybody gets a piece of.
No, YouTube is your own pie that you create yourself.
So, you have to think of it like that.
Just enjoy it, enjoy it for what it is.
And always remember, too, is if you have critics,
everybody's got critics, you've got people who hate you.
If you got haters, you know what, congratulations,
it means you're doing something right.
- At least you're standing for something.
- Yeah, exactly.
Now, to a certain extent, of course.
But even if you have people who don't like your videos,
or saying nasty things, try not to let it get to you.
It will every now and then, it happens to the best of us,
but always remember that those people,
they're watching you because you gave them an
emotional response, they are emotionally invested,
enough to say something.
I find it better for somebody to come and stop what they're
doing to hate you than to just completely walk by
and ignore you because you are worth something,
to take their time to talk to you.
So, you know, keep that in mind.
And so, just keep YouTube fun,
keep YouTube real to yourself.
- And here's one last bit of advice,
when someone approaches you, they wanna hire you to do
a branded video, never take their first offer.
Say, "Nah, I usually work for more than that."
And then just see how high they go.
(men laughing)
That's another bit of advice.
- There you go.
- Yeah.
- Spoken from experience.
- Never take the first offer.
- There you go.
I think there's two main things that I see in creators
who actually keep going on this platform for longterm,
and that is, one, I've noticed that most of them tend
to have some sort of sense of humility about them,
in that they're open to receiving criticism,
and they're open to hearing feedback,
and they're open to new ideas.
And also, at least the second thing then,
is that they've continually found ways to reinvent
themselves and stay relevant.
You know, like some channels have been around for awhile,
doing the same thing today that they were five,
six, seven years ago, and the content has just gotten stale.
But the people who have continued to grow and develop
over time, like Phillip DeFranco, for example.
Like, he was one of the first ones.
He just keeps reinventing himself, he keeps experimenting,
trying new things, challenging himself with new ideas
and experimenting.
And I think that's really, really key that you don't get
into a rut and you give yourself the freedom
to reinvent yourself on a regular basis,
and try new things, and keep your content fresh.
Both for you, yourself, creatively,
as well as for your audience.
With that said, I am really looking forward to reading
what you guys say in the comments below about
what you think some of the top pitfalls are that
creators need to avoid in order to continually
grow their channel and making it sustainable longterm,
and staying relevant for people for years,
and years, and years to come.
So, learn from each other, read each others comments
down there, you'll learn a ton from each other.
If this is your first time here at Video Creators,
I would love to have you subscribe because this channel's
all about helping you guys grow your YouTube audiences,
so you can reach people and spread a message that
changes their lives.
That's what this is ultimately all about for me.
So, thank you for letting me and these other creators
be a small part of that.
Subscribe and I'll see you guys again next Thursday
for another YouTube training video.
See you then, bye.
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(man laughing)
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- I have that effect on a lot of people.
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- High five.
Very nice!
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- Anything else you wanna say?
- I love you all.
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No, seriously, I love you, I do.
I love you very much.
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